domingo, 11 de octubre de 2015

The wedding was over and now Christina had
to supervise the removal of every single table and fork from the premises. The
castle was a very special place to do such celebrations but they always asked
for the place to be cleaned thoroughly after each party. It was very late and
everyone was not very eager to clean anything but it had to be done. Christina
supervised the men and women and checked every room where people may have
wandered off to in order to see if it needed cleaning or if thee was something
left behind. She found a scarf in a bathroom and even a high heel stuck in the
grass in the garden. Another employee found a tie on a tree and a baby bottle
beneath one of the tables. But the most beautiful thing Christina found was on
a fountain in the garden.

The water seemed tainted with something but
she ignored that and just grabbed the earring that lay there, beyond the
surface. The design was very simple but beautiful: an orchid made of metal with
a center formed by a large purple precious stone. Christina saw every detail on
the earring and realized she had never seen such a beautiful thing worn by
anyone in the past. She decided to keep it and look for the owner herself.
Maybe that way she could be able to ask where the earring was made so she could
herself a pair. When everyone was done cleaning and leaving the place as if
nothing had happened there, they were allowed to leave. It was almost four in
the morning and everyone just wanted to get home and sleep for as long as they
were able to.

Christina wanted that too. She entered her
car, sat down and pulled out the earring from her pocket to put it in her
purse. But when she did that, she pricked her finger with the tip of the
earring, which fell beneath her seat. Somehow, that had made her feel a little
dizzy and her head felt big, like if it was a balloon or something. Christina
inhaled deeply many times until she thought she was able to drive. She opened
and closed her eyes, turned on the engine and drove in the night. But the truth
was she couldn’t see much. She knew she was tired but not as much as she know
felt. The car slid off the road a few times but she was able to control it but
she knew that couldn’t be done for long.

On a long curve, she finally succumbed to what
she was feeling and let go of the car which when out off the road and into a
tree. The airbag was the thing that killed her. The police discovered the car
hours later and several members of the staff of the party said that they had
seen her drive off after the cleaning was over but really no one knew about the
earring. A detective assigned to the case, just in a routine way, discovered
the piece of jewelry beneath the scene and he too fell in love with its shape
and beauty, so he grabbed it for himself, even if it was evidence from the
case. He took it home at night and left it in the kitchen counter.

In the morning, it was already too late. Her
youngest daughter had touched it out of curiosity and pricked herself too. Like
Christina, she started to feel groggy. They were able to take her to a hospital
but she was slipping away until she died. The doctor couldn’t give a proper
explanation, as the child appeared to be falling asleep to very deep slumber
but then died. The parents were crushed and stayed home to do the paperwork but
they had forgotten about Marta, their housekeeper. She had keys to come in to
do her work, so she did. As she mopped the floors, she found the earring and
found it to be just marvelous. She had the idea to get it praised and maybe get
some money out if it. She had never seen any of the women of the house wearing
it, so it shouldn’t be an issue.

However, Marta lost the earring on the bus.
Fortunately, it fell off her pocket and just rolled under a seat, where it
wouldn’t be found for some days until a driver checking his transport found it.
He took it home, as they had all done. He told his wife it would be a nice pin
to wear, in order to give his attire a little bit of class. His wife found a
piece to put in his husband’s jacket and she was successful enough, she didn’t
even prick a finger. And the jewel looked simply beautiful against the blue
suit he had to use for work. He used his jacket like that for many years, been
praised by many people when going in the bus.

Those kind words made his life very happy. But
one day, as it was destined to happen, the safety piece his wife had put behind
the earring fell silently when he was driving. It was the same day a car
crossed his path incorrectly, so he when he stepped on the brakes, he leaned
forward violently and pricked his chest with the earring. The crash was blamed
for his death. His body was transferred to a morgue, where they would fix him
to look perfect. But a young mortician named Lidia fell in love with his pin
and took it for herself. When he was buried, his wife thought he was wearing
the pin, looking handsome as always but he wasn’t. The pin had a new owner, one
that did something the other didn’t.

Lidia had gotten several piercings and tattoos
and she knew what was right. She got home and there she cleaned the earring
carefully, avoiding pricking her fingers or damaging in any way the integrity
of the piece. Weirdly enough, once she started cleaning the piece the pointy
end started to turn purple, just like the jewel it had there. Lidia found this
to be very strange so she decided to grab a small plastic bag, put the earring
there and go to a friend that worked in a lab. Maybe he would be able to
explain what was wrong with it because it was obvious she couldn’t put it on
her ears. Maybe it had an infection or some other kind of disease and it
wouldn’t be surprising if it had been on a dead man’s suit.

Larry, Lidia’s “scientific” friend, worked as
an assistant in a pharmaceutical company where he worked with various compounds
and many advanced machines. When he was able to take the earring to the lab
where he worked, he noticed something strange. He asked Lidia if he could
damage the piece a bit, specially the tip and she agreed. She wasn’t going to
wear it, so no one cared. Larry broke the tip of the earring and a soft purple
dust tainted a small plate he had beneath. He had the dust checked and the
machines couldn’t tell him exactly what it was but he was able to know what
was, chemically, in there. So he did some of reverse science and discovered the
dust was some kind of poison.

But it wasn’t just poison. The earring,
apparently, had been dipped into it and then left alone until the metal, and
even the jewel, had absorbed the poison. But who would want to do something
like that? It was a very complicated way to poison someone but Larry then
realized that, looking at the compounds of the poison, it would be unlikely for
medical scientists to even know they were dealing with something like that,
mainly because the poison seemed to disappear from anywhere in a few hours.
Larry told Lidia that maybe a lot of people had been killed by it and no one
would ever know as the poison was untraceable and only they knew about its
existence and about the earring.

But then envy made its appearance in the form
of a rival to Larry, who just happened to be very good at his job and had found
many ways to make the pharmaceutical company win even more money. So this
person, this enemy if you will, discovered the ring and thought that if Larry
was working with it, it was because it meant something important. So he grabbed
it and took him for himself. He took it home and checked it there with a
microscope he had but he found nothing and he wouldn’t because the poison was
not made to be found. In time, he pricked himself with it, enraged because he couldn’t
find something to steal from his rival. His father found his body the next day.

After that episode, no one really knew what
had happened to the earring. Larry always thought he had just lost it but Lidia
knew him very well and she knew he wouldn’t just loose something. More deaths
happened but, as the people before Lidia, no one was curious or careful enough
to handle it. They all thought that the beauty of the piece meant it was made
to be worn, to be shown to the world and to be an icon of status and
recognition. But it wasn’t. It was just a way to lure the people, the large
crowds that believed that beauty was as simple as they were. They didn’t
understand that beauty can also be lethal and should always be handled with the
uttermost respect and curiosity.

jueves, 13 de noviembre de 2014

Lin and Allan had been inside the crashed craft for over an hour now and there were no signs of survivors to the crash.

The day before, radars had detected the ship near the planet. Several times the people at Jongjin base had attempted to establish contact but the ship but hey were unable to. Then the ship appeared to lose all stability and fell into the planet.

A scientist and a military officer had been sent to check the crash site. No living beings were onboard. From the look of it all, it appeared as if the ship had been empty all along but that was impossible as radars and other technology had verified the ship was on a strict course before they stopped and fell into Katf II, the second planet in a system not far from Earth.

Both astronauts came out of the ship and entered their vehicle, a four wheeled rover that could travel as it would in Earth. The atmosphere was similar but not breathable. As they traveled back to the base, two hours away, they started talking about the possible reasons the ship was there and why it crashed.

Suddenly, the wind started to blow, getting stronger by the minute. The vehicle had to stop and, in these cases, the astronauts were required to raise stay still as storms normally moved a lot and it would be soon be away from them.

- I'm so hungry.
- Didn't you eat before leaving?
- No, I had to submit my report on that rockslide on the far side last month. Pain in the ass.
- Did someone got killed?
- No, but...

But Lin didn't know more of the matter. The wind, that had formed a tornado of sorts, was moving away from them. What had impressed Allan to the point of being rendered speechless was a figure that had appeared from the other side of the storm, it moved slowly but towards them.

Lin realized about it too and grabbed the binoculars that they kept between the two seats. She could see what the creature was: it seemed like a man with a limp but its looks were far from that. It was made of something green and seemed to be furry. Furry...

- What is it? - Allan asked.
- We need to get to the base, now.

She restarted the vehicle and pressed on towards the base.

Once there, Lin asked for an emergency meeting with the top minds and chiefs in the base. They were all there in a matter of minutes. Allan was the last person to arrive. He approached Lin and said something to hear, almost in a whisper.

- May we know the reason of your call, Ms. Lin? We have things to deal with.
- I know and I'm sorry to call you like this but it is urgent.

Lin asked Allan to turn off the lights and then presented to the audience with a video, apparently footage made with a handheld recorder. The video depicted a woman in a lab. She seemed very intelligent but very worried too. She said that she worked with a company from Earth that dealt with biogenetics and related topics. Her duty was to study all pathogens that could affect humans but that her bosses had asked, in a top secret document, to start the creation of a special virus, a strong one, able to resist any plague.

To her own surprise, research and its costs were not a problem and within a couple of years they had a prototype. Unfortunately, the experiment had worked all too well: the virus had proved its resistance to everything, even to humans. When scientists decided the project was too dangerous, the virus took possession of several members of the scientific body, killed them.

The female scientist said that their last opportunity was to send the virus to the Sun, so it would be destroyed for good. They shipped the virus in an automated craft and launched it but they soon realized they had failed. They realized the virus had taken control of the ship.

She finally stated she did this video for the people to know the company wanted all record of the virus erased as it was "no longer their problem", as the craft it inhabited had left the system.

When the video stopped, the lights turned on and Lin explained the video had circulated for years amongst scientists but everyone had thought it was best not to mess with it all. Until now.

Lin explained that her and Allan had witnessed a creature walking towards them in the desert, limping and deformed. Checking the data they had gathered on the crash site, she realized the ship may be the one carrying the virus.

One of the men laughed and said it was all ridiculous. He said that, even if was all true, the possibilities of the craft with the virus landing in Katf II were very slim as larger planets would have attracted the craft.

Lin responded by telling him that her team had been investigating a life source near the crash site. An oasis of life on the planet. The creature seemed covered in moss, similar to the one that grew in that oasis. She theorized the virus had gotten close to it for water but then used moss to form a body.

Suddenly all lights went off and the red emergency ones were on. A voice in a speaker told everyone on the base the exists were now closed and that everyone should remain calm.

Allan approached a computer and logged on the security cameras on the outside. They all scanned the images until a woman from the mining commission yelled "There!".

On a camera registering the outside of the parking area of the base, they could see a creature resembling a man but with no face or fingers. It was banging at the door, possibly attempting to go in.

Then, everyone's cold got ice cold: from the "belly" of the creature, a face came up, that of a man. And the man screamed. And they knew all was lost.